Trump Closing in on Construction of $400M New Orleans Tower

The tower will also feature a 127-foot spiral. With the spiral the tower is the equivalent of 15 floors taller than any other building in the city.Mowe tells GlobeSt.com that while a national marketing campaign will begin next week with advertisements, inquiries have been strong and he's seen impressive presales even though the units are just now hitting multiple listing services. "One surprise to us is the interest by locals," Mowe says.

About 400 units will be hotel condos, or condos that will be rented by Trump management for the owner. "Our development group is also considering keeping a large number of the condo-hotel units, which would mean fewer units on the open market for sale,'' Mowe says. They could keep as many as 150 units."At this point we don't want to give a groundbreaking date because we thought it would have been before now,'' Mowe says. "The Trump Organization is working on the final budgets for the condo documents that must be finished before we can convert the contracts,'' Mowe points out.

There will be about 250 condominiums ranging in price from $395,000 to $3 million and more for penthouses, says Irene Rand of regional firm Prudential Gardner Realtors Inc., contracted to handle Trump International sales. Prudential will be holding a 9,000 member annual meeting of brokers and agents, both commercial and residential, in New Orleans and Rand says that should ratchet up national awareness, particularly regarding misperceptions of the recovery of the core tourism and business sectors of the city.

The tower has had its skeptics in a market where three proposed condo tower deals have crashed and burned. Only one, the 127-unit, 24-story Tracage by developers Tracage Development LLC, is actually under construction. The $70 million project's prices start at $200,000 and top out at $2 million. Development partner Anthony Iarocci says they are sticking to their late 2009 completion date. Tracage had 70% pre-sales before beginning construction. The partners in Tracage are all regional players and have entered a joint venture with Spectrum Capital of Jackson, MS for the development.

While overall condo sales are down in New Orleans, especially in the historic Warehouse District, skeptics questions the viability of the Trump tower. Rand says those pundits don't understand that the Trump brand creates its own worldwide market. "We're getting a lot of money from a lot of people from around the country as they see the city as an opportunity'' for real estate investment post-Katrina, Rand notes. "The city has maintained the charm, character, historic homes and core tourism areas," she says. People "are finally getting'' that New Orleans is back and its prime destination areas did not flood.

New Orleans-based First Bank & Trust, whose chairman of the board is Joseph Canizaro, former president of the Urban Land Institute and a long-time friend of Donald Trump, is putting together special financing specifically for the tower buyers. Canizaro also bought a block of condos, says Rand. That also goes for some other top executives in the area. "A lot of these local affluent people are those that got used to vertical living while they were in Houston or Atlanta following Katrina. I was in a high-rise condo building where 40% of the people were from New Orleans. I think it was their first experience to vertical living" and the experience sold them on the lifestyle as opposed to a grand century-old mansion in the city's historic Garden District or French Quarter, Rand says. "It certainly has drawn their attention to Trump International,'' Rand tells GlobeSt.com. Foreign interest, especially with a depressed dollar, is also heavy, she says. "I've done deals with people from Italy to Venezuela."